CGOTS is one of APSA's "related groups" organizations. Founded in 1990, it serves to promote Taiwan studies in the broader political science community, as well as to foster connections between Taiwan-based and U.S.-based scholars with substantial research interests in Taiwan.

For applicants with a Taiwan-related proposal, submitting to CGOTS can substantially improve one's chances of acceptance to the conference. The formal call for papers is reposted below; the deadline to submit applications is January 9, 2017.

The 2017 American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Meeting will be held from August 31-September 3 in San Francisco, CA. The conference theme is “The Quest for Legitimacy.”

CGOTS invites paper and panel proposals on Taiwan’s domestic politics and cross-Strait and international relations that are consistent with the theme of “The Quest for Legitimacy.”

The concept of legitimacy is fundamental to many classic debates in political science. At the same time, legitimacy is core to numerous contemporary political issues. Across the world and our discipline, questions about political legitimacy ensue. Salient debates—whether about representation, equality, voice, accountability, institutionalization, protest, revolutions, international norms, disputes, war—can all contain questions of legitimacy at their core. Moments of social and political change often center on contestation about what is considered legitimate, including some of the more prominent movements in Taiwan in the last several years such as demonstrations against nuclear power, government land expropriation, the death of a military conscript due to harsh corporal punishment, and of course the Sunflower Movement. Legitimacy is also closely tied to numerous core concepts, including the creation and maintenance of order, the proper exercise of power, and the nature and role of political authority. The legitimacy of state actions in Taiwan has become more contested in recent years, most notably in the conduct of cross-Strait relations with the People’s Republic of China. So has the legitimacy of the law-making process, particularly questions about how far majorities can go to implement policies over minority objections.

For the 2017 Annual Meeting, we encourage participants to consider questions about legitimacy in contemporary Taiwanese politics. These could include exploring legitimacy in the context of Taiwan’s contested international standing, or its complicated and shifting relationship with the People’s Republic of China. And on the domestic front, a wide range of questions speak to the issue of legitimacy. How, for instance, is the issue of “transitional justice”—itself a highly contested concept—understood by different sides of the political spectrum? What does public opinion tell us about the relative legitimacy of different democratic institutions—the judicial system versus elected officials, for instance? How is the spread of new technologies reshaping how citizens understand “legitimate” political behavior and discourse, or affecting the accountability of representatives to their constituents? How do citizens and elites understand the rule of law, and how might this vary across different issue areas and subsets of the population? There are also important questions about procedural legitimacy: to what extent do those on the losing side of political outcomes, from elections to government policies to judicial rulings, accept the legitimacy of decisions which hurt their own interests? Finally, there are important unresolved questions about the legitimacy of the definition of citizenship in Taiwan: should immigrants from the PRC be treated differently from immigrants from Southeast Asia, for instance?

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Kharis Templeman (kharis@stanford.edu), CGOTS Coordinator. The deadline for proposals is January 9, 2017. Decisions on the proposals will be communicated to you in March 2017. Travel support for CGOTS panelists is subject to the availability of external funding.

Leave a Reply.

About Me

I am a political scientist by training, with interests in democratization, parties and elections, and the politics of new and developing democracies. My regional expertise is in East Asia, with special focus on Taiwan.